Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 year banking career, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, and other major industry publications. The American Bankers Association (ABA) published Barnewall’s Profitable Private Banking: the Complete Blueprint, in 1987. She taught private banking at Colorado University for the ABA and trained private bankers in Singapore.

Sunday, October 25, 2015

FEMINISM? OR MASCULIZATION OF WOMEN?

PART 2

By Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall
October 25, 2015
NewsWithViews.com

Today’s feminists
imitate male behavior and are threatened by women who enjoy being feminine
while competing in the world of business which is dominated by rules and
regulations created by male personalities that for so long dominated the world
of business and politics.

Since women compete in what has always been a traditionally
male domain, it seems logical to think the only way to get ahead is to adopt
the male traits developed in the world's corporations by men who ran them with
no female senior managers for so many years. In many ways, that’s true.

In my world, women have very strong traits uniquely their
own. They should be highly valued by society and the business community. They
would be if women started acting like their very strong, valuable feminine
traits have value.

Because women emulate men and their male traits rather than
exhibit feminine strengths in the world of business, real female potential lays
dormant. It is difficult to earn respect for female strengths when women, by
emulating males, compete from positions of weakness rather than strength. Male
traits come naturally to men and are reflected in the business world they
created over the centuries. Female traits come naturally to women -- and they
are quite opposite male strengths. Existing business standards are filled with
black and white arrows pointing to male strengths that represent the road to
success. It would be pretty stupid for women to paint a new sign, right?

What can women bring to the business world that it currently
lacks?

How about true compassion? Men tend to intellectualize it.
Women feel it in their hearts and souls. How about intuition? How about
gentility? Or common sense? How about an inbred-by-nature security drive? A
real security need prevents people from making stupid short-term profit
decisions which, in the long run, can ruin a company -- and a social order.

Security is a long-term thing, not something one achieves
today that will come back and bite one in the backside a year from now -- like
manufacturing faulty tires that kill people, then denying it even when the
evidence is overwhelming.

“But,” you might say, “business isn’t compassionate. It
doesn’t function on intuition. It isn’t gentile ... and, often it uses little
common sense. And, you’ve said yourself, business is about managing risk, not
eliminating it.” An absolutely accurate statement. AND THAT’S WHAT’S WRONG WITH
BUSINESS – AND POLITICS!

Managing risk does not mean ignoring it. Ideally, it means
pitting a totally competitive and high-risk nature against its totally
security-driven opposite. It means pitting what comes naturally to men –
competition – against what comes natural to women – a security drive. It
provides intelligent balance. It is called yin and yang by the Chinese.

If men and women functioned in the world of business as true
equals, a sense of risk management skills that come naturally to men would
prevent the male tendency to become too competitive for a short-term gain by
offsetting it with security drives, natural to women. Balance would result.
Nature is balance in action.

Companies would be properly competitive. Volkswagen wouldn’t
be paying billions of dollars in fines for lying about emissions and causing a
scandal that will cause years of reputational repair, if women who displayed feminine
rather than male traits had been involved in that corporate decision.

Males would be paying attention to short-term profits while
security-conscious women ensured a positive long-term view of the future. You
would not have a tire company denying that its tires kill people, then
admitting that they do. You would not have a major U.S. auto manufacturer
producing cars with gas tanks that explode, burning people to death. The
feminine security-drive and sense of compassion would eliminate the need for costly
corporate (and government) cover-ups. Tobacco companies would have admitted
that nicotine is addictive far sooner than they did. Companies would not be
cooking their books to falsely attract investor dollars to their stock
offerings because in the long term, it always fails.

With women adopting male traits in the world of business and
politics, the advantage corporations could gain from real feminism is lost.

Can you imagine the feminine strength of the need for
security allowing Lehman Brothers to create the liar loan mortgage-backed
derivative packages that has brought economies worldwide to dangerous levels of
potential failure? I can’t.

Female politicians have, for the most part done the same
thing women in the world of business have done. The Donald Trump/Carly
Fiorina/Ben Carson phenomenon results from public rejection of entrenched male
and female politicians giving politically correct rather than truthful answers
to voters.

In other words, because until very recently business and
politics have always been male dominated, both reflect male strengths. Male
competitive business instincts that harm consumers lack feminine compassion and
intuition. It places short-term corporate good ahead of long-term business
survival.

Risk management that succeeds in the short-term but fails in
the long-term means the competitive drive is too strong. The drive from a
feminine security need is lacking.

For example, spending too much in the short term results in
long-term cost-cutting. Such stupidity is unnecessary when the common sense of
most housewives is applied. This is the male philosophy of cost effectiveness.
No one understands cost efficiency better than women -- and there is a huge
difference between cost efficiency and cost effectiveness.

Men understand cutting costs as a means to achieve economic
objectives. They spend irresponsibly until economics causes them to rein in
their appetites. When companies are cost efficient (the female security drive
makes women save for tomorrow), the need to constantly cut costs is eliminated
... along with all of the human pain caused by the jobs that are eliminated as
costs are cut.

If the business world functioned at an optimum level, it
would work in concert with the laws of nature. Women would be encouraged to
bring their natural talents to the corporate table. Their strengths would be
integrated with male strengths and they would be appreciated.

Since the beginning of time, nature has created balance at
the highest possible point of positive action by placing two equally strong
forces in opposition to one another. In this case, male and female forces.

In such an environment, women’s femininity would be valued,
not derided. Men would be encouraged to exercise their strengths (which are
female weaknesses), and women would be encouraged to exercise their strengths
(which are male weaknesses).

Instead, women leave their female strengths outside the
doors of their offices each day. They compete with men whose strengths have
traditionally set the standards for performance in the world of business.

Conservatives are always realistic and the fact is, women
are newcomers to the world of business management. It is logical that when one
group competes from a position of weaknesses with a group using its natural
strengths, the group using its weaknesses to compete suffers a disadvantage. If
feminists were a little less demeaning towards male strengths and a bit more
appreciative of their own strengths, perhaps they would stop pretending to be
men and learn how to be real women. It would certainly end the Let’s Pretend
War Against Women -- especially the one being waged by progressive liberals.
The one that wants to destroy natural feminine traits and replace them with
what comes natural to men. They are so confused about their genetic identity,
it’s frightening.

Can women walk into the world of business and demand to have
their strengths written into next year’s corporate business plan? Of course
not! They can, however, do what over one-third of America's business owners do:
become independent business owners, hire and utilize male strengths in concert
with their own, and set a successful business example the giants of commerce
cannot ignore.

Additionally, they can avoid falling into the trap of
forgetting their feminine strengths. When women avoid imitating men as the
primary means of seeking equality while concurrently understanding and
appreciating male strengths in the world of business and politics, they will be
on the true road to equality. Moreover, while avoiding the loss of their
feminine identities, they can gain respect for their strengths.

How? By making them work for the corporation. Gently ... as
is the way with feminine women. We created the concept of an iron fist in a
velvet glove. Ask any mother.

About Me

Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career in 1956 as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 years (plus) as a banker and bank consultant, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, was U.S. Consulting Editor for Private Banker International (London/Dublin), and other major banking industry publications. Barnewall taught private banking at Colorado University and has authored seven banking books, one dog book, and two works of fiction and one biography.
Barnewall is the former editor of The National Peace Officer Magazine and has written editorials for the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and Newsweek, etc. She has written for News With Views, World Net Daily, Canada Free Press, Christian Business Daily, Business Reform, and others. She has been quoted in Time, Forbes, Wall Street Journal and other national and international publications. She can be found in Who's Who in America (2005-10), Who's Who of American Women (2006-10), Who's Who in Finance and Business (2006-10), and Who's Who in the World (2008).